Co-produced with Jim Scott (Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers) with longtime associate John Cuniberti on board handling mastering duties, guitar maestro Joe Satriani releases his latest album Shapeshifting is released on 10th April.
Collaborators old and new can be heard on the record. Legendary drummer Kenny Aronoff (John Fogerty), bassist Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction) and keyboardist Eric Caudieux are the core musicians featured, with additional contributions coming from Lisa Coleman (The Revolution) and Christopher Guest.
Shapeshifter will be available through Sony Music/Legacy Recordings and the retro-sounding first single ‘Nineteen Eighty’ is out now.
The single finds him revisiting the period when he was working with his first band, The Squares. As he noted, in those early days, they “dialed back the guitar solos and histrionics to try to create a cooler new wave vibe.” Decades removed from those goals, he was free to go forward and attempt to recapture what was on his mind in 1980.
Staying true to the sounds of the time, he even used a vintage MXR EVH phaser. “I’ve always been a huge fan of Eddie Van Halen,” Satriani said. “In my mind, he just crystallized that era. The late ‘70s and early ‘80s, he kind of saved rock guitar. So that’s what I would have been doing.”
Shapeshifter can be pre-ordered, and will be available in a variety of unique bundles, that you can find out about by clicking here.
The albums release will be pre-empted by a UK tour that you can read all about at RAMzine by going here while you can catch the video to ‘Nineteen Eighty’ right here.
